"What makes the novella work despite these faults is Claus's giddy instinct for plot and pace, his openhearted enjoyment of sexual eccentricity and his nostalgia for a truly romantic countryside." - Publishers Weekly

"This novella (...) partly accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is to show the creating and destroying power of an iconoclastic Christ in a rural Belgian town where religious zeal barely exists." - Frank Kooistra, Review of Contemporary Fiction

"Of the sophistication of his art, its sureness of touch, the deftness with which it handles characters, events, symbolically charged places and objects, there can be no doubt, especially as Ruth Levitt's translation reads easily and sensitively. But one can be thoroughly dissatisfied with what Claus makes of his art. Rather than redeeming the ugliness of human conduct, his vision compounds its essential cruelty with contempt." - Paul Binding, Times Literary Supplement

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This short novel is another of Claus' relatively dark visions.
Martin Verhegge is a young, impressionable boy, and his current fixation is on Christ.
Taught in secret about religion by a Miss Dora who is thrilled to impart the faith, he has taken to wandering about with a cross on his shoulders, wondering about the (religious) consequences of his actions.
Others in the story bear different crosses.
Martin's mother Sibylle, bored or distracted, begins an affair with the headmaster.
A handyman works on the Verhegge roof: Richard, who years earlier had gone to prison for performing abortions and has now turned to drink.
A police commissioner questions Richard, in a give and take of power and authority.
Oh yes: there has also been a nasty death.
But Claus isn't writing a mystery.
This is a morality play.
Claus paints his village portrait well, blending the half-dozen significant characters easily through the story.
He writes with precision and he writes well -- only Headmaster Goossen's wife, Liliane, seems too simplistic to be believable.
It is a heavy story Claus relates, and perhaps a broader novel would have been more successful with this subject and these themes.
Nevertheless, the book is solid and quite good for what it sets out to do.
It may not be to everyone's taste (the religious aspect may not please), but it is an intriguing short read.